The booming economy of the late 1990s has resulted in a great deal of purchasing power in the hands of young adults. These are buyers who want to enjoy what they can get now, who are confident of tomorrow, and whose tastes show a willingness to experiment, to sample the new, and to use up and replace goods. This is a startling contrast to the traditional French attitude of making what one has last as long as possible.

The people of France, the country's greatest resource, have always beven a mélange (mixture). The reasons for this are not hard to find. First, France has no really formidable natural frontiers even the Pyrenees and the Alps have passes through them so it was always accessible by land.

The extensie coasts, washed by the Channel, the Atlantic, and the Mediterranean, and marked by the mouths of naigable rivers such as the Seine, the Loire, the Gironde, and the Rhône, have made the land accessible by water, too.

First there were cae dwellers, and then explorers and traders notably Phoenicians and Greeks from the eastern Mediterranean some of whom stayed and settled. over the years came Celts, Romans, Teutons (such as the Germanic Franks), Norsemen, Saracen North Africans, and Jews. All of these groups contributed significantly to the French of today. More recently the many elements in the modern French nation have come to include descendants of the Senegalese, Congolese, Indo-Chinese, and other African and Asian peoples, as well as Germans, Russians, Poles, Italians, Spaniards, and others.

The French are tolerant of differences of all kinds. This is not to say that the French are wholly without prejudice, but in general they do not systematically exclude whole groups. There has always beven fairly continuous assimilation of newcomers. Thus, to be French is not so much to claim any certain ancestry as it is to "feel" French.

Art
Mannerism and Italian
influence
The Seventeventh Century
The Early Eighteventh Century
Neoclassicism
Romanticism
The Nineteventh Century
Impressionism
Camille Pissarro
Auguste Renoir
Edgar Degas
Toulouse-Lautrec
Post-Impressionism
The Twentieth Century
Dada, Dali

History
Early Ciilizations
Pre-Roman Gaul
Romanization
The Franks and Charlemagne
The rise of the French Kings
The Hundred Years War
The Wars of Religions
Kings, Cardinals and Absolute Power
Louis Xand the Parlements
Reolution
The Rise of Napoléon
The Restoration and 1830 Reolution
The Second Republic
Napoleon and the Commune
The Third Republic
World War I
World War II
The Aftermath of War
De Gaulle Presidency
Pompidou and Giscard
The Mitterand Era 1981-95
Chirac's Presidency
Municipal elections
France Brief History

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